The eye and the ferocious beast.

[Chris V++]

Hey I'm trying to get the look of graphite without having to invest the time. The eye is watercolor on synthetic paper (yupo) 9x12 and the cat is a mixture of acrylic ink and watercolor on yupo. She is our cat at a little large than life size. It looks better irl, i'm getting a lot of glare. I learned ill never combine the watercolor and acrylic again because of the differences in sheen. I'm trying to spray coat then varnish reduce glare and even out the finish. I don't think anything can rival graphite but it's so time consuming. The cat took almost 5 hours but would take 30 hours with pencils It was a good experiment at least so will know what not to do next time.

 

[d taylor]

Your pictures look good
Have looked at trying powered graphic. This is just one example, i am sure there are many demo video out on youtube.

 

[Chris V++]

Your pictures look good
Have looked at trying powered graphic. This is just one example, i am sure there are many demo video out on youtube.

Thanks for the video! I once ground down a graphite stick for some DIY graphite powder. It certainly does speed up the process. I've been watching the South African artist on youtube who uses powder with cotton balls for his backgrounds.

It still takes him hundreds of hours to work at this scale. I want to go big as well but i always lose interest if a project takes more than a day or two.

 

[tall73]

Hey I'm trying to get the look of graphite without having to invest the time. The eye is watercolor on synthetic paper (yupo) 9x12 and the cat is a mixture of acrylic ink and watercolor on yupo. She is our cat at a little large than life size. It looks better irl, i'm getting a lot of glare. I learned ill never combine the watercolor and acrylic again because of the differences in sheen. I'm trying to spray coat then varnish reduce glare and even out the finish. I don't think anything can rival graphite but it's so time consuming. The cat took almost 5 hours but would take 30 hours with pencils It was a good experiment at least so will know what not to do next time.
View attachment 277914 View attachment 277915

Great detail for Yupo, but I would think the Yupo itself would make a graphite look difficult. Have you tried digital for imitating?

 

[Chris V++]

Great detail for Yupo, but I would think the Yupo itself would make a graphite look difficult. Have you tried digital for imitating?

Thanks. Graphite looks really bad on Yupo. You see nothing but the glare, but the warm inks look similiar. I'm about to start a thread with some ink drawings that look pretty close. I wish I could paint digitally but I don't have the hardware for it.